Coaxial board or case mounted receptacles are well known in the art for connecting coaxial cables and printed circuit boards (PCBs) in RF and microwave applications.
The most common connector presently in use for RF and microwave applications comprises a metallic body housing a Teflon.TM. insulator with metallic centre contact. Other connectors incorporate various combinations of metal and plastic components to provide a signal-carrying centre contact and an outer ground-connecting contact plane. Examples of such prior art are found in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,645,288; 5,120,258; 4,964,805; 4,718,864; 4,934,960; 5,411,409; 5,180,315; 5,104,325; 5,011,415 and 3,980,382.
In an effort to provide an RF coaxial connector with proper impedance and which is surface-mountable directly to a PCB in an automatic assembly process, U.S. Pat. No. 5,145,382 discloses a molded plastic surface-mountable coaxial connector which includes a molded platable dielectric body. The '382 patent requires both a plated centre contact portion and a plated ground contact portion separated by a layer of resist. The centre contact portion comprises a selectively plated aperture which is an integral part of the dielectric body. As such, the centre contact does not replicate the ubiquitous metal connector designs known in the art and therefore is not intermateable and interchangeable therewith. Instead, the connector disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,145,382 requires a unique plug-in mating piece. Because the centre conductor is plated, multiple insertions of a coaxial cable into the connector can result in wearing off of the conductive plating.